On the arguments, that Colbert skit and more.
By: Hank Kalet
I understand their concerns, but part of me wonders if this phenomenon (I won’t call it a trend because trends require evidence) is about ownership of civil rights in the same way that Jews have taken ownership of the word "holocaust."
There were special issues surrounding the civil rights movement, to be sure, as Brendon L. Laster told a Times reporter: "But I do think their struggle is, in fundamental ways, very different from ours. We didn’t chose to come here; we came here as slaves. And we were denied, even though we were legal citizens, our basic rights."
True. But that does not mean there are not connections to the civil rights movement or that what the current wave of immigrant protesters are not seeking to expand their civil rights, to be treated as full members of society. The same can be said for gay activists, who also are struggling for full acceptance.
No, these groups are not facing the same issues as African Americans did in the 1950s and 1960s, but should that matter?
The Rev. Jesse Jackson says no:
"We too were denied citizenship," the Rev. Jackson told the Times. "We too were undocumented workers working without wages, without benefits, without the vote. We should feel honored that other people are using tactics and strategies from our struggle. We shouldn’t say they’re stealing from us. They’re learning from us."
Speaking of immigration, has anyone else caught the nifty tautology at the center of the anti-immigrant argument? It focuses on legal status illegal immigration is wrong because it is illegal, a bit of circular logic that is hard to argue against.
Of course, the same folks making the argument are probably driving faster than the speed limit, doing work in their houses without a permit or cheating on their taxes. I guess legality is in the eye of the beholder.
And Lou Dobbs harkened back to days of yore earlier this week when he accused "radical elements" of infiltrating the immigrant-rights movement and said that the choice of May Day, which he linked to socialists, pretty much summed up the movement. A bid of red-baiting that Charlie Gibson should have called him out on.
Some interesting takes on the Colbert performance.
Slate offers this useful explanation, while Salon’s War Room column pretty much sums up the loud silence surrounding Stephen Colbert’s satiric tour de force.
And Joan Walsh offers this take (also in Salon):
"Colbert’s deadly performance did more than reveal, with devastating clarity, how Bush’s well-oiled myth machine works. It exposed the mainstream press’ pathetic collusion with an administration that has treated it and the truth with contempt from the moment it took office. Intimidated, coddled, fearful of violating propriety, the press corps that for years dutifully repeated Bush talking points was stunned and horrified when someone dared to reveal that the media emperor had no clothes. Colbert refused to play his dutiful, toothless part in the White House correspondents dinner an incestuous, backslapping ritual that should be retired. For that, he had to be marginalized. Voilà: ‘He wasn’t funny.’"
(Also in Salon.)
Read today’s Bob Herbert and tell me you still support what is happening in Iraq.
"The media are much more focused on the trendy problem of steroids in baseball than, say, the agony of the once healthy young men and women who are now struggling to resurrect their lives after being paralyzed, or losing their eyesight, or shedding one or two or three or even four limbs in Iraq."
Oh, say can you sing "The Star-Spangled Banner"? Doubtful. Or as the headline to Jacob Weisberg’s very funny piece on Slate puts it: "’Sing’ ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ in English? Who’s Bush kidding?"
Thank you, Garrison Keillor. I wish I had written this.
I’m opposed to the death penalty, but that’s not why I think the final verdict and sentence in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui offers, as The New York Times writes, "the best possible outcome."
The Times sums things up nicely:
"For all his bombast, Mr. Moussaoui had no direct role in the 9/11 attacks. And it is good to know that he will not achieve a fanatic’s martyrdom."
The verdict and sentence, however, were not the most important thing about the trial. The most significant thing "was that it happened. The proceedings including the jury deliberations were long and difficult, but they were also fair and in accordance with the rules of American justice.
"That is not the story for hundreds of other people, many far less complicit than Mr. Moussaoui, who are languishing in the prison at Guantánamo because the United States rounded them up haphazardly during the Afghan war and plunked them down in Cuba without any clear plan on what to do with them over the long run."
And that’s a shame and a travesty and a crime that we as Americans need to address.

